Raymond Hoffenberg

Sir Raymond Hoffenberg KBE GCOB (16 March 1923 – 22 April 2007) was an endocrinologist who specialised in the study of the thyroid. Born in South Africa, he was forced to leave in 1968, and settled in the United Kingdom, where he was President of the Royal College of Physicians from 1983 to 1989, and President of Wolfson College, Oxford, from 1985 to 1993.

Early life

Raymond Hoffenberg, affectionately known as Bill, was born and educated in Port Elizabeth, Union of South Africa. He studied medicine at the University of Cape Town from 1939, aged only 16. He was also an active sportsman, taking part in tennis, golf, squash, boxing, and rugby. He enlisted in the Union Defence Force in 1942, serving as a stretcher bearer in the Second World War in North Africa and Italy in the 6th South African Armoured Division.

He returned to South Africa to complete his degrees, MB and ChB, in 1948. He was an intern at Groote Schuur Hospital, and then a lecturer at the University of Cape Town Medical School. He married his first wife, Margaret Rosenberg in 1949, and they lived in Newlands. They had two sons.

He spent some time serving under Albert Schweitzer at Lambaréné in French Equatorial Africa (now Gabon), and travelled to the United States in 1957–8 under a Carnegie Fellowship, and started to specialise in endocrinology. He obtained his MD in 1957 and PhD in 1968. He was a lecturer at the Department of Medicine at the University of Cape Town from 1955 to 1967. He also continued to practise medicine at Groote Schuur Hospital, where he was involved in preparing for Christiaan Barnard's first heart transplant operation in 1967.

Opposition to apartheid

He ran into political difficulties in South Africa.